The Art of Fugue
by Sidney Sussex
Summary: John, Sherlock, a violin and an accident with lasting damage.  Rated for permanent character injury.
1. Minor Third

_I neither own nor profit from any of these characters; they are the property of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and the BBC._

_If you see something that you think ought to be changed or improved, please feel free to let me know, if you'd like. Constructive criticism is always welcome._

_Special thanks to Feej and LeDragonQuiMangeDuPoisson for having read this over for me and helped me so much to make it work._

* * *

><p>He knew without opening his eyes where he was. Iodine and cleaning solution, hum of fluorescent lighting overlaid with beeps and clicks, starchy roughness of cheap sheets. Hospital.<p>

Sherlock hated hospitals – waste of time. He was about to open his eyes when he felt something else besides the over-clean bedding and the press of the needle (uncomfortably familiar) in the crook of his elbow. Warm fingers, threaded through the cold ones of his own right hand.

Mycroft? Mycroft's hand wouldn't be so warm, his fingers so sturdy. Sherlock opened his eyes.

Of course. John.

Sherlock rolled his head to the right to face his friend, unwilling to lift himself from the crinkling pillow. John looked concerned – what had happened? – and exhausted and slightly ill, but under it all, something more. Sadness? Fear? A smile crossed John's face at the sight of Sherlock's awakening, but it didn't last.

Sherlock would have thought it would have lasted. His frown mirrored John's, pain radiating from what must obviously be a scratched, bruised left side of his face. "What am I doing here?"

John dropped his gaze. "You were hurt, remember?"

"No, I feel fine." The face wasn't even worth acknowledging.

"You don't remember?"

"No." Sherlock tried to shift his legs underneath him, a prelude to sitting up, but they felt heavy with disuse. "How long have I been here?"

"Since yesterday," said John, "but you spent a lot of that in surgery."

"In _what_?" Sherlock demanded, bringing his hands up to pat himself down, locate the intrusion into his body, but that alone was enough to bring it into view. He let his hands (_hands?_) fall again, sick at the sight.

"Um… Sherlock…" John shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. But Sherlock had already seen.

The numbness chilled him, and he couldn't stand not knowing everything, the whole story, mapped out in front of him, every muscle, tendon, bone and sinew of his left hand.

"_Sherlock!_" and John grabbed at Sherlock's right hand, clasping it tightly, pressing him back against the bedclothes by his shoulders. He struggled, _had to know_, but whatever had happened had left him weaker than usual and John's soldier's strength had the best of him.

He fell back against the pillow, swallowing the nauseating fear of uncertainty as he tried to struggle upright again. "John," he pleaded, "let me see."

"No. You can't take off those bandages. You'll never heal if you don't leave it!"

"John, _my hand!"_

John held up both of his own as if to ward off Sherlock's panic. "I'll tell you. Just lie back." He added, weakly, "please."

Sherlock did, resisting the urge to tear at gauze and tape and examine the evidence with his own eyes. Instead, he searched John's expression for his answer.

"Two fingers," said John, "and I don't know how much mobility you'll have left in the others. Your hand was shattered, Sherlock. It's amazing they were able to save any of it."

"They?" Sherlock asked sharply. "Not you?"

"I couldn't, Sherlock. I'm not an orthopaedic surgeon. I couldn't have helped."

Sherlock's silence stretched on a little too long.

"Sherlock, I'm sorry. I know it's no good, but I am." He didn't know what else to say. "At least… at least you're right-handed."

He didn't know why Sherlock's face collapsed at that, his expression shifting rapidly from urgency to startlement to a flash of something that might have been pain and then to careful neutrality.

"I think I should rest, John."

It was true, but John knew Sherlock wasn't saying it because he was tired, or because he thought it would be good for him.

"I'll let you get some sleep."

* * *

><p>When he left the room, he wasn't sure what to do. He didn't want to be too far from Sherlock when he awoke again, but it was clear that his friend didn't want his company at the moment. Might as well go back to Baker Street and at least shower and change, he thought, as he turned away and walked down the corridor to the elevators; he'd been wearing the same clothes since yesterday, and they were filthy with dust and plaster from the explosion.<p>

He'd gotten off easy. His jumper was a small price to pay in comparison to Sherlock.

Just walking up to the front door of 221B was a relief. The familiar green paint, the scent of lunchtime soup from Mrs. Hudson's small café, were comfortingly mundane. The only thing out of place, and it took him a few moments to put his finger on it, was the lack of anticipatory dread of whatever Sherlock might have done while he was out. It was strange to realize that there would be no surprises today.

Even stranger to open the door at the top of the stairs and be proven wrong.

"Hello, John," said Mycroft, from Sherlock's usual position on the couch.

"Hello," awkwardly. What should he say? Mycroft would know Sherlock wasn't here, which meant he had come to talk to John. He must have been monitoring them, to have gotten here first.

"Do come in."

Why did it feel so natural to be invited into his own flat by someone he barely knew?

"Um, Sherlock's… well, he's woken up."

"I am aware. I don't think he would particularly appreciate my visiting him at the moment, do you?"

"No… I suppose not. He didn't seem to want…" John suddenly realized that he was still standing just in front of the doorway. The kitchen, he thought. Like always. "Tea?"

"No, thank you." Ordinarily, the refusal would have carried with it a tinge of condescending amusement. _How domestic; tea is the answer to everything_. Today, Mycroft's voice was devoid of even that trace of humour. "Sit down, please, John."

"Look, I know you think…" What _did_ Mycroft think? "It's… I couldn't stop him, you know how he is. It was all I could do to keep up with him."

"No one blames you for the accident," Mycroft assured him. "There was no way you could have known."

"Right." Well. If he wasn't about to be blamed for what had happened, then why was Mycroft here?

There was only one way to find out, so he sat down in his favourite chair. His clothes were in a right state – he was going to get plaster dust all over the upholstery. It didn't help that he was seated, fragments of drywall in his hair, next to Mycroft's polished shoes and crisply pressed suit.

Mycroft, he realized, was holding Sherlock's violin.

He waited.

"This was a gift from our mother," he said. "It used to be hers, you know."

"Yes, I…" John nodded. "Sherlock told me she taught him how to play."

"'Play' being only a loose description for the torture Sherlock brings to bear on this violin."

Privately, John felt the same, though he suspected Sherlock _could_ play properly if he wanted. He suspected Mycroft knew this as well.

"I never learnt to play an instrument," mused Mycroft, turning the bow over in his hands and running his fingers along the winding. "I found other things took up all my time."

For a man who had no use for music, John thought, Mycroft was being astonishingly reverent in his treatment of Sherlock's violin.

"Sherlock was captivated, though. He used to beg Mummy to let him stay up and listen to her play."

John had never even given thought to Sherlock as a child. He found that, even thinking about it, he couldn't envision the standoffish consulting detective as anything other than the tall, angular man he was now. Then again, Mycroft as a child was, if possible, even more difficult to imagine.

"He was so overwhelmed when she gave him this. It was almost as if, for all the time he had spent listening, making the music himself had never even crossed his mind."

Sherlock, overwhelmed? It must have been a cold day in… well, anyway.

"Do you play an instrument, John?"

"No. Well. I learnt the clarinet in school. Not anymore, though."

"I see."

Well, he'd been busy, John thought defensively. There had been the matter of medical school, and a war, and then Mycroft's bloody brother to keep from getting killed. Which he had accomplished, mostly. He'd done a less-than-perfect job.

"Then you may not understand what it is like to love, truly love, an instrument, so that it fills your entire being. The violin was the only thing that could calm Sherlock's mind, sometimes."

Was?

John hadn't kept Sherlock completely out of danger, but he wasn't _dead_. He just…

Oh.

_Oh._

And in the silence that followed John's realization, plainly written across his face, John could have sworn he heard his heart break for the loss of tortured strings and sleepless nights.

Mycroft laid the violin and bow down on the couch, then rose and nodded.

"Perhaps I'll visit my brother later, when he is more… socially inclined."

The door closed silently behind him on his way out.

* * *

><p>John was left staring at the violin resting on the dull, greyish leather of the couch.<p>

Gently, he picked it up. It was lighter than he might have expected, fragile in his hands. He wondered how it survived the abuse Sherlock gave it whenever he was particularly frustrated by a case – it seemed as though the delicate wood might shatter under the violent crashing of bow against strings. Maybe Sherlock's playing was more deliberate than he had thought.

He ran his hands along it, feeling the smooth curve of polished wood under his fingertips, cold where it had lain on the couch, warm where it had rested against Mycroft. The texture of the strings reminded him inexplicably of precision surgical instruments, finely milled to improve grip. He plucked experimentally at one, startled at the clear, piercing tone in the afternoon silence of the flat. Another pluck. Another vibrant note.

John had seen Sherlock play before, and now he lifted the violin to his own shoulder, certain he was doing this all wrong. It felt strangely like a violation – he doubted Sherlock would ever have let him touch the instrument, had he asked – but he had to know.

Bow. Right. On the couch. Pick it up, hold it… how? Not in his fingertips. Not clasped in his hand. He settled on something in between the two, laid the taut horsehair to the strings below his chin, and drew his hand back.

A rasping scrape, a thin squeal that sounded like the worst of Sherlock's midnight crimes against music.

Again. Hold it level. Slowly.

The same grating noise, but then, just for a moment, a warm, rich sound, dark brown, that filled the air and vibrated through John before fading into a shriek of protest.

Ah.

That note, then, that sound, was what Sherlock effortlessly brought forth, even when it seemed to John like he was just seeing how much noise he could produce with only four strings. The sensation of it, curling around in his brain and heating somewhere deep in his chest. That must be what Sherlock craved when he stood by the window at night and kept John far from sleep.

He looked at the violin still on his shoulder, his left hand curled around the neck, the bow hanging loose in his right.

He thought of the look on Sherlock's face in the hospital, when he'd said that stupid, _stupid_ thing, and understood.


	2. Perfect Fifth

Sherlock was released a day later, against his doctor's orders. John had the feeling Mycroft was not about to refuse his younger brother anything at this point.

When they got back to the flat, the first thing Sherlock did was sit down on the couch (his usual spot, of course) and begin unwinding his bandages.

"What are you doing?"

"I have to see, John."

"You can't take those off. It needs to heal."

"It will. I only want to look."

"Looking won't change anything."

Sherlock glanced up, his eyes connecting with John's for the briefest of moments before returning to the task of loosening the gauze wrap. "I know."

John gave up. "I want to bandage that up again immediately you've seen."

"Of course."

He went to sit beside Sherlock on the couch, winding the loose end of the gauze back up into a roll as fast as the other man unwound it from his hand. Yet again, he thought with the barest hint of amusement, his combat medical training was coming in handy for dealing with Sherlock Holmes.

The last of the gauze bandaging came off, revealing the taped dressings below. "Gently," John warned, knowing that removing the medical tape would be painful; he had seen the abrasions on his friend's skin, not to mention the carefully-controlled expression on his face during dressing changes at the hospital.

He received only a scornful look in return for the word of caution, but he had expected nothing more. Sherlock loosened the tape, piece by piece, then let the dressing fall away.

A jagged, dark line stared back at them, a misplaced mouth of threaded teeth, and Sherlock's pale (_remaining_) fingers curled like claws beside it.

John drew a shaky breath. The stark, black stitches were standard procedure, neatly done, and from a medical standpoint, the healing was progressing very well indeed.

But this was Sherlock, and it all seemed like some twisted joke.

He was glad to see, at least, that the thumb and two (_remaining_) fingers responded, albeit stiffly, to Sherlock's tentative flexing.

"Right, enough," he declared firmly, "give me your hand."

Sherlock didn't move for a beat, long enough that John's eyes flickered up to the detective's face in concern. He was impassive as ever, though, and after another fraction of a second, brought his hand up and laid it in John's outstretched one.

"Hardly a hand at this point, John."

John didn't meet his gaze again as he bent over the task of re-dressing and re-wrapping Sherlock's injury. "You'll have good use of your thumb and fingers," he said, a prediction based on doctors' reports and his own practised observations. "It won't be the same as before, but it won't be a radical loss of function."

"No, it _won't_ be the same as before," Sherlock agreed. "Because I've only got half of a hand left. How nice of you to have noticed."

"Sherlock, I – "

"Oh, stop worrying. I don't need your sympathy."

John finished wrapping and taped off the end of the bandage. "Look, I know this isn't – "

"It doesn't matter," Sherlock cut him off, waving his good hand in irritation. "Just transport, remember?"

He reached over to his right in a gesture born of long habit, then froze.

John pretended not to notice as Sherlock sat, immobile, for a moment, then rose from the couch and began to pace.

"Send a text," he snapped abruptly, and John dug resignedly in his jeans pocket for his mobile. At least Sherlock's texting wouldn't be impaired, since he already got John to do all of it for him anyway.

He raised his eyebrows at the detective, waiting for further instructions.

"To Lestrade," Sherlock huffed in annoyance. "Surely Scotland Yard haven't suddenly become competent because I've been away for a few days."

Frankly, John thought, they had probably welcomed the reprieve, but he also knew that Lestrade had checked in repeatedly with John about Sherlock's condition and it would likely be a great weight off the Detective Inspector's shoulders to know that Sherlock was back to being a case-demanding nuisance again.

Text sent, John sat back on the couch, turned on the television, and continued to pretend not to notice that Sherlock's pacing was a poor substitute for what they both knew was missing.

* * *

><p>He had been very lucky that Sherlock hadn't looked for his violin since his return from the hospital. The detective still reached for it on occasion, fingers closing around the empty spot it had once occupied on the arm of the couch, but he was doing so less often now, and withdrawing his hand more quickly.<p>

John, without having said anything to his friend, had put it in his bedroom. He'd thought it might make things easier for Sherlock not to have it as a constant reminder.

He sat on the edge of his bed now, looking at the violin case just inside the open closet doors. It would have to go back to Sherlock at some point, but he still remembered the swiftly-hidden look on the younger man's face in the hospital (stupid, John, _stupid_) and he was loath to be the cause of that look again.

He rested his fingers on the silver catches of the case, then shook his head and turned away. He ought to update his blog, he reminded himself instead. It had been several days, and now that he knew people were reading it, he hated to leave it alone for too long.

For once, Sherlock hadn't commandeered his computer. The injury had barely slowed down Sherlock's touch-typing at all, but he used his own laptop more often now, perhaps because he was more accustomed to the size of the keyboard and the layout of the functions.

John found himself staring at a blank "new entry" page on his website, unsure of what to write. _Sherlock's been hurt_, he thought, that was just stupid. _Sherlock's had an injury_, right, that made it sound like a paper cut. _Sherlock…_ but then he remembered that Sherlock read his blog, too, and he suddenly couldn't set any of the events of the past few days to words.

Instead, his eyes roved across the screen, bookmarked pages lined up along the toolbar, none of them particularly appealing at the moment. Fine. There were other things he could be doing.

He had already reached up to close the laptop when his eyes locked onto the search toolbar at the far right of his browser.

Sherlock's footsteps, pacing from carpet to hardwood, hardwood to carpet, carpet to hardwood, drifted in through the half-open door.

John started typing.

* * *

><p>He waited until Lestrade called Sherlock in on another case. In the weeks since the explosion, the Detective Inspector's reluctance to ask for assistance at crime scenes had begun to fade a little, and both John and Sherlock were glad of it – John because it kept his friend from driving himself to distraction pacing around their flat, and Sherlock because it proved that nothing had changed.<p>

Today, John made excuses not to accompany the consulting detective to his latest job. Something about household chores; he wasn't even quite sure anymore what he had said, but he did know it had made Sherlock grimace in distaste, huff an impatient sigh and leave on his own – which was exactly what John had been trying to achieve.

Now, alone in the flat, he retrieved the long box he had hastily stuffed into his closet a few mornings ago when it had arrived at the door. Sherlock hadn't asked any questions then, having been preoccupied with trying to guide a 33-gauge needle into a tissue sample on the table in front of him (protected by a thick layer of his own notes and diagrams, thank God, because John had eaten breakfast in the same spot just that morning). He'd had to wait for an opportunity to unpack the box, though.

Slicing the packing tape surrounding the cardboard with the blade of his old army Leatherman, he folded the flaps outward and reached in to fish out the sheet of paper that lay on top. His eyes flicked down the printed list: bass bar, soundpost, bridge, chinrest, strings… he didn't know what most of the words meant, but he'd read about them online and it sounded about right. He put the paper aside.

Carefully, he lifted out the case taking up most of the room in the box and laid it face-up on the bed. He'd considered for a long time before sending away Sherlock's own instrument, but he had finally decided that it would be better, somehow, than a new one. This violin would mean something. This violin, like Lestrade's crime scenes, would mean that not everything had changed.

He set it out on the arm of the couch, where it had always lived until a few weeks ago, and waited.

Sherlock returned hours later in a whirlwind of long coat and dark hair and the flushed joy of having found a really interesting case. Or perhaps just the flushed joy of having dealt Anderson a particularly clever insult; those two ranked almost equally highly in Sherlock's esteem. He headed straight for the couch, calling out, "Tea, John" even as he flopped down on the middle cushion.

"Kettle's on," John replied mildly.

"And do we have – " Sherlock's question broke off midway through.

John looked over. Sherlock was staring at the violin, but John was too far away to make out his friend's expression. He stepped closer.

"Sherlock?"

"Did you have this?"

"For a little while."

Sherlock picked up the bow, turning it over and over in his hands. The movement reminded John of Mycroft, who had done the same thing the day after Sherlock's injury.

Better not to tell Sherlock that Mycroft had touched his beloved instrument as well.

"Go on," he said. "Pick it up."

Bitterness flashed across Sherlock's face, not quite the same as in the hospital, but no better, either.

"What good would it do?" he asked, twisting the bow harder. John worried he might break it.

"Sherlock, have you looked… really… looked at it?"

In answer, the detective turned away from John and back to the violin on the couch. John closed his eyes, and Sherlock was silent for so long he almost couldn't stand it.

"Ah."

He opened his eyes.

Sherlock slipped a hand under the violin, lifting it as if to test its balance. He raised it and settled it against his shoulder, chin against the newly-positioned rest, fingers of his right hand closing on the strings. The bow shook in his left hand – he would need to devise a way of controlling it properly, later – but steadied when he laid it against the strings, not playing, just holding.

Then a single, wavering note, the same rich sound as the one John had played on the day Mycroft had come. It didn't sound much better than John's efforts, either, but John had had ten fingers and hadn't been holding the violin backwards.

There was something John wanted to do. He was almost at the foot of the stairs to his bedroom when he heard Sherlock's voice, softly, from behind him.

"John."

"Mmm."

"Thank you."

* * *

><p>John opened his laptop, called up a new blog entry, and settled his fingers onto the keyboard.<p>

"Sherlock," he typed, "is learning to play a left-handed violin."


End file.
